Biography

While drumming with Nirvana, Dave Grohl was recording original songs at home that never received public release. Those tapes would become the foundation of Foo Fighters, the band he formed in 1995, after the death of Kurt Cobain. Like Nirvana, Foo Fighters melded loud, heavy guitars with pretty…more

Dave: I'm a steak guy. A nice fillet. The key to making a good steak is in the flipping. You want to turn your steaks. You have to show each steak an equal amount of love. Don't walk away from the grill. If the steak gets lonely, it will burn. You don't want that. Ok? You just don't want it.

Dave: I love songs that make you wanna jump around, have a good time for three and a half minutes. Eight-minute songs drenched in feedback are cool too, but I just can't write them. I wanna write a song as good as that Supergrass thing, 'Alright', that's a fucking great pop song.

Dave: The Rolling Stones didn't give us a guest list, they reserved a hundred tickets that we could buy for $64 a piece. So if I wanted my sister or my girlfriend to come, I had to buy a fucking ticket. And they didn't give us a dressing room in the venue, we had to sit in the trailer out in the parking lot. That was fucked up, that was bullshit.

Dave: Kiss was fun. But I hate Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. I wouldn't pay 100 bucks to see any rock show unless there were, like, 15 bands on the bill. I sure wouldn't pay 100 bucks to see Barbra Streisand eat fucking brie. Ok, maybe I'd pay that much to see a Police reunion - but I'd better get a T-shirt. (on reunions)

Dave: Every now and then the cry goes up 'Is techno the new punk rock?', 'Is west-coast ska revival the new punk rock?' The answer is that punk is an ethic, an attitude. Every generation is visited by that punk ethic, for some it's rap for others it's techno and what I experienced as punk, the Ramones, the Pistols, the DC hardcore scene, is what inspired me to get off my ass.

Dave: Stoned prayer is the best. When I was in Catholic school, we'd get high and have our morning prayers. It'd be like, 'Duuuude, I think I just accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior... I'm going to the candy machine'.

Dave: We got the ping-pong table on the road. There's nothing wrong with a little zhing-zhang now and again. We're big on it. There's not better way to warm up for a show than a nice five or six-game tournament. It gets your hand-eye going; you break a sweat.

Dave: (on Ozzy Osbourne) I love Ozzy, too. He was once considered "The Most Evil Man In Rock" and yet he's the cutest and funniest guy in rock, too. He's just a little kid....with a hash pipe in his mouth!

Dave: Jennifer asked if there were any spirits in the house. The glass on the Ouija board spelled out, 'Y-E-S'. I was just looking at Jennifer and she wasn't moving at all. The glass was travelling without her pushing it. Jennifer then asked, 'What happened here?' The glass spelled out, 'M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D'. I asked who was murdered and got the reply 'M-Y-B-A-B-Y'.

Dave: My mother worked three jobs to support my sister and me. She was a high school English teacher. She worked at a department store at night. And on the weekend, she did estimates for a carpet-cleaning company. She worked her fingers to the bone just to make sure we survived. Now she's retired, and I bought her the house we grew up in, and I added on a whole extra wing. She comes out on tour at special locations, like Australia three months ago. We had a blast. We went to wildlife preserves and petted wallabies.

Dave: I used to hate London. I just couldn't get into it. But only last year did I start to realise that London is my favourite city outside of the States. There's something about the women in London that has changed too. I don't know what you guys have been importing or what's your trip, but it's a whole new scene. The first time I came to London it was just all fish and chips, but now it's Nobu and the Metropolitan Hotel!

Dave: Lemmy makes everyone else seem like a poo-butt junior schoolboy. That guy is the King, man. He knows it! There's no question. He walked into the room and I really felt that for the first time I'd met a real rock and roller.

Dave: He had a great sense of humor and was one of the most unique people I've ever met: eccentric and unlike anyone else in the world, and a gentleman to boot--polite and shy, but fucking hilarious. There is this dark cloud that hangs over the name Nirvana, but we had a lot of fun. We spent half our time rolling on the ground with our fucking ribs aching and tears rolling down our face because things that were going on were so funny. (on Kurt Cobain)

Dave: The best time for the gum is just before getting onstage. Onstage I need a minty-fresh microphone. There's no gum that keeps it's flavour for more than 20 minutes. I need flavour. I like me some Dentyne Ice. I just know the colours: black, blue or green.

Dave: I think were the only Grohls in America with this spelling. On my first tour of America I'd pick up telephone directories to check, and I never found any. It's a little kooky because me and my cousin Brian are the only two people who can carry on the family name.

Dave: There was a ghost in my old house, and other musicians from Seattle were present when it happened. We played with the Ouija board, and some unbelievable things occurred. I'm not really interested in supernatural phenomena, but ever since then, I believe in their existence that little bit more.

Dave: I don't give a shit if he likes our band, but I take it personally when a politician that doesn't represent my personal beliefs uses music that I poured my heart and soul into for his personal gain. (on George W Bush)

Dave: I love flying. I never learned, but I wanted to. It was around the time of the 'Learn To Fly' video.How about Bruce Dickinson, flying chartered jets? I heard he was flying boy bands around and stuff. I really wanted to learn. I started getting the instructional video tapes and wanted to sign up for classes, but you can't half-ass it if you're learning to fly. You have to be devoted, and I just couldn't do that.

Dave: I'm kind of claustrophobic, sometimes in airplanes I can't stand that fact that I can't get off if I want to. I have crazy claustrophobic dreams; weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down — 'oh my God, it's a casket'. Just freaky stuff like that.

Dave: For all you guys that haven't experienced the culinary delight that is the English breakfast, let me explain: First of all, they have these things called bangers. Now, a banger is a sausage, but it's not your everyday breakfast sausage...no, no, no...it's about the size of a hot dog, with a wonderful, almost papery skin on the outside. The inside is like the yummiest, squishiest, most delicious treat you've ever eaten. (I think I just made it sound disgusting) OK...so then you've got your eggs (nothing fancy), and your hash browns (no big whoop), and your toast, which, if you like, they will fry (I prefer it fried because, hey, anything to line my arteries with even more filth, GOD BLESS AMERICA...)...and then...here's the best part…. BAKED BEANS. Yes... baked fucking beans.... for breakfast. Oh my God, I could eat that shit all day. If I were president, I would make each and every school in America serve English breakfasts to the kids every morning.

Dave: I have crazy vivid dreams every night and remember them all. I once dreamt that I had drowned. I was in the water trying to catch my breath and someone swam up to me and said 'It's OK you can let go and you can breath now.' All of a sudden, I wasn't in the water anymore. I was just floating. I took this breath of air and realised I'd died. It wasn't so much the visual of the dream, but the feeling that, 'OK this is the moment I've waited for my whole life.' It felt so real, no pain, just that this was it. I floated through this series of tunnels and wound up in a gallery with other people floating around. It was pretty wild feeling waking up from that.

Dave: I'm able to knock up a shelf. I can knock down a wall too. There's no challenge to that. You just knock the fucker down. It helps to do it right. But, even if you don't, you learn from your mistake. Ok, it might be an expensive mistake. But, hey, I'm rich as shit. I can afford to make expensive mistakes.

Dave: People who work at Disneyland who walk around dressed up as Goofy, apparently, under no circumstances are they allowed to remove their outfits when they're in the parks. So you have these people in 80lb Goofy costumes, running around in 110 degree heat. Even if you happen to vomit, you're not allowed to remove your costume in front of the children because they'll freak out and won't believe that Goofy is a real animal. Once you're wearing those costumes, you're not even allowed a regular piss break. I guess you could just piss in your suit. But imagine if you're five years old and the first time you met Minnie Mouse she smelled of piss and vomit.

Dave: Um. Well. I guess that she's truly an individual. I've never met anyone like her in my whole life. It's one of those things where you might bicker back and forth via lawyers and when you see each other you kind of just giggle. We bumped into each other in an elevator at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, and she invited me to Michael Stipe's room. I went up and said hello. (on Courtney Love)

Dave: I never fancied coke at all, because a friend of mine had a heart attack outside a 7-11 when he was 18 doing coke. So it's always been this evil, deadly drug - plus if I started doing it, I'm the kind of person would just fucking blow every cent I had to shove the world up my nose, I'm hyperactive enough.

Dave: I'm a breakfast person. I wake up every day and drink my coffee. Some days it's the full breakfast, it's kind of on and off. Full breakfast 'Monday, muesli Tuesday, fruits on Wednesday, full breakfast again on Thursday. (on breakfast)

Dave: It's the most egotistical thing anybody could possibly do. I read Motley Crue's - it's hilarious, but all embellished crap. It makes them seem like complete assholes: We raped chicks and did heroin. I don't want people to know that much. (on autobiographies)

Dave: I did absinthe with Taylor a while back. We ended up daring each other to hold a lit Cigarette jammed between our arms. We giggled as our flesh burned. That's what absinthe does to you. (on absinthe)

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